Give Me Orwell Or Give Me Cyber-Crime

We face a stark choice between a potential Orwellian state and lives ruled by cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals. This choice stems from living in an Internet-driven, overconnected world. Fortunately, by opting for a potential Orwellian state, we give up very little.

Mention the words national ID card and you will be attacked by liberals on the left and conservatives on the right. Republicans like Rep. Jim Guest from Missouri will tell you such an idea is “a frontal assault on the freedom of Americans.” Former Democratic Rep. Ed Roybal from California warned “We may face the danger of ending up like Nazi Germany.”

Rep. Roybal might want to be reminded that in today’s Germany, one of the most privacy-sensitive nations in the world, all citizens are required to carry a national ID card. And both lawmakers seemed to ignore the fact that in the U.S., a virtual national ID card already exists.

As an American citizen you are already living in an Orwellian world. All the government needs to do is get hold of your credit records from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax and add to it information from Visa, MasterCard, and American Express databases. They can then dip into FBI, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, and passport databases and combine that with state drivers license records. To top it off they can go after the really valuable stuff like the records in the ChoicePoint database.

ChoicePoint has a 250-terabyte database on 250 million people, or about a megabyte per person. That’s the equivalent of a 250-page book. ChoicePoint helped solve a serial rapist case in 2002 by analyzing DNA and other databases and producing the names of six suspects. The company helped identify remains from the World Trade Center by a matching DNA found on bone fragments to its records. It possesses criminal histories and driving records that authorities have used to solve other challenging cases.

So don’t feel safe from an Orwellian existence just because you are…

Read the Full Article at https://www.forbes.com

Bill Davidow’s New Book:

The Autonomous Revolution — Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

Follow Bill Davidow: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.